Sunday, March 26, 2017

Limping Into Spring - Touch of Spring Fever by Tuesday PM

.04" rain fell yesterday in St. Cloud.41 F. maximum temperature yesterday at STC.44 F. average high on March 26.39 F. high in the cities on March 26, 2016.

March 27, 1946: A record high of 78 is set at Redwood Falls.

Spring Is In No Particular Hurry This Year

"A
mentor is someone who sees more talent and ability within you, than you
see in yourself, and helps bring it out of you" wrote Bob Proctor.

It's
strange how careers get started. For me in was study hall (which I
excelled in) my senior year of high school. One of my classmates had his
own show on a little AM radio station in town. I tapped him on the
shoulder. "Why not have your own weather guy on the air?" I asked,
impulsively. He thought about it, put me on the phone to his boss, and
that would be the first of nearly 100 radio stations I've been on over
the years, from Pennsylvania to Minnesota.

Bob Roerig, the friend
who took a chance on me, died of a massive heart attack. Be sure to
thank the people (teachers, mentors, parents, etc) who gave you your
first shot.

I'm conflicted: I want it to warm up as much as you
do, but spring warm fronts are often serenaded by thunder and shrieking
sirens. The south will see a series of severe weather outbreaks this
week; just brushing Minnesota with showers late Wednesday into Thursday.

No quality time in your basement anytime soon. At least the sun comes on Tuesday with 60F possible next Sunday!

Tornado-Producing Squall Line.
The visible image above shows the comma-shaped swirl of low pressure
that created enough wind shear to spin up rotating supercell
thunderstorms capable of softball-size hail Sunday evening from north
Texas into Oklahoma. Imagery: College of DuPage.

Seattle Blues - Another Midweek Severe Outbreak.
12 KM NAM model guidance from NOAA shows a steady fire hose of Pacific
moisture pushing more waves of moderate rain into the Pacific Northwest,
while a deep trough of low pressure sets the stage for more severe
weather over the central and southern Plains by Wednesday. Animation:
Tropicaltidbits.com.

Creeping Into Spring.
No hot spikes, not even a serious warm front, but ECMWF guidance hints
at MSP metro highs near 60F on Tuesday; fairly consistent highs in the
50s over the next 15 days. Meteogram: WeatherBell.

Mammoth Got So Much Snow This Winter It Called In the National Guard for Help. Amazing. The Los Angeles Times has details: "Hey, Mammoth Lakes,
add this group shot of the National Guard to your winter scrapbook.
Burdened with removing the 44 feet of snow that had fallen this season,
the village of 8,200 called in the National Guard earlier this month to
help cart 4,000 tons of it away. The five-day offensive, involving 17
air and Army troops, will be just one of the many memories in this
winter of monster, record-setting snows. The SOS — shovel our snow — was
issued after the village and Mono County declared a state of emergency
to seek help in handling the piles that lined homes and streets. A
request for snow removal assistance was passed along to the state Office
of Emergency Services (Cal OES), which then called in the Guard..."

More Warm Spring Days. Not every day, but the trend is more warmth earlier in the warm season, according to Climate Central: "...Spring
is getting warmer, on average, as the globe heats up from the increase
in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As a result, the number of spring
days with above-normal temperatures is increasing in many places in the
U.S. In an unchanging climate, the number of days above normal and
below normal should be relatively balanced and constant through the
years. For meteorological spring, that number would be 46 out of the 92
days. In the majority of these cites, the number of days above normal
has risen sharply. In some cases, there are more than 10 additional
above-normal days than there were a few decades ago..."

A Windy March.
The greater the contrast in temperature, the stronger winds have to
blow to keep the atmosphere in a state of equilibrium. Dr. Mark Seeley
reports on a blustery March at Minnesota WeatherTalk: "March
has been a windy month so far with average daily wind speed over 12
mph, and 9 days with peak wind gust over 30 mph. This continues a trend
of windy weather which began the last week of January. The peak wind
gust from MSP airport of 60 mph on the morning of March 8th was just the
5th time in the past 20 years that peak wind gusts in the Twin Cities
have hit 60 mph or greater. The other years were 1998 (May), 2007 (Aug),
2008 (June), and 2010 (Oct). Historical trends in wind speed are
difficult to study. There is great geographic disparity across the
state. In western Minnesota, as well as the Twin Cities Metro Area wind
speeds have been greater than normal more frequently in the months of
February, April, and November. over the past two decades. Conversely,
over the same time period, wind speeds have generally been less than
normal more frequently during the months of May and October..."

Rainy Day? Microbes May Be at Play. Science Friday provides details: "Bacteria
are all around us—even in the atmosphere. Under the right wind
conditions, air currents sweep up ultra-light microbes, which can drift
as high as the stratosphere. For instance, a 2012 study
appearing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences identified over 300 different families of bacteria floating
amid the clouds. As it turns out, these airborne microbes seem to
influence the weather. Recently on Science Friday,
we spoke with Cindy Morris, a microbial ecologist at the French
National Institute for Agricultural Research in Avignon, France, and
Athanasios Nenes, a professor of atmospheric sciences and chemical and
biomolecular engineering at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia, to
understand how microbes participate in precipitation..."

Fun Factoids About Clouds.
Your typical run-of-the-mill popcorn cumulus cloud weights as much as
100 elephants. Who knew? Here's a nugget from a very good post at Mental Floss: "...Clouds
look like they weigh little more than a tuft of cotton, but they’re
heavier than they look. Your average cumulus (fair weather) cloud can weigh more than a million pounds,
and a vivacious thunderstorm can pack billions (if not trillions) of
pounds of water in one tiny part of the sky. Yet, all of that weight
seems effortlessly suspended in the air. It’s both a little unsettling
and, at the same time, awesome to think about..."

Minnesota's Earliest Tornado.
It's strange seeing tornado damage with snow on the ground. If the
dynamics and wind shear is strong enough it doesn't much matter what's
happening on the ground. Here's are two excerpts from the Faribault County Register: "The
severe storm that uprooted trees, deroofed buildings and overturned a
camper on March 6 in Pihl's Park, near Wells, actually included a
tornado. And not just any twister. A March 17 survey by the National
Weather Service (NWS) determined that the campground damage was the
product of an EF-1 tornado one that struck earlier in the year than any
other twister in the history of Minnesota...But Faribault County's March
6 heavy winds, which forced Pihl's Park to close its campground and
public park for an anticipated seven weeks' worth of repairs, were
actually the first to strike at around 5:04 p.m. that evening, according
to the NWS..."

Photo credit: "The March 6 storm
that did some heavy damage to the county’s Pihl’s Park, including
flipping this camper over, was designated as a tornado that first
touched down near Bricelyn and traveled nearly 10 miles to near the
Wells area. It was designated by the National Weather Service last week
as the earliest-in-the-season tornado ever reported in Minnesota."

UW-Madison Researcher Creates Tornado Computer Simulation.
As computers become more powerful (and cheaper) we are getting closer
to modeling a simulation very close to reality, as reported at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: "...Orf
is a scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological
Studies at UW-Madison who leads a team of researchers using computer
models to unlock the mysteries of tornadoes. As tornado season gets
underway, scientists like Orf are working to peel back the layers of
twisters to determine how and why they form. The recipe always includes
wind shear, instability and lots of moisture plus a trigger to move the
air up, which can be a difference in temperature or moisture. But what
vexes researchers is that storms that have all of those ingredients
often don't form tornadoes. Unlocking the tornado code could help
forecasters better predict them and give people in their path more time
to seek shelter. "My dream, and maybe in my lifetime it will happen, is
we can predict a scenario where in a 1 square kilometer region we can
say a tornado will hit and we can do that well in advance of the storm,"
said Orf..."

Image credit: "When a tornado is
fully formed, the simulation reveals several structures that make up the
tornado, including the streamwise vorticity current (SVC), thought to
be a main driver of the tornadic activity (seen in yellow)." (Photo: University of Wisconsin-Madison).CBS Affiliate in Ohio Cut Away from UNC-Kentucky Finish for Tornado Warning. Talk about bad timing. The Washington Post reports.

VORTEX Southeast: Tornado Study Gears Up For Another Year of Research. Here's an excerpt of a press release from the University of Alabama/Huntsville and WeatherBug: "The
mysteries of severe weather in the southeastern U.S. -- and why
tornadoes kill and injure more people here than any other part of the
country -- will get an in-depth probe this spring, as researchers from
11 research institutions around the country gather at UAH for the second
year of a major research campaign. Coordinated by the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Severe Storms Laboratory
and hosted by UAH's Severe Weather Institute, Radar and Lightning
Laboratories (SWIRLL), VORTEX Southeast (V-SE) uses mobile and portable
research hardware, such as UAH's MAX Doppler radar, to get in front of
strong storms to learn more about how these storms develop, how they
interact with the local terrain and environment, and why some storms
create tornadoes and others do not..."

Image credit: "​Erik
Rasmussen, VORTEX-SE project manager and NOAA senior research
scientist, speaks about the research at Signature Aviation with a NOAA
Lockheed WP-3S Orion aircraft in the background. The WP-35, nicknamed
Kermit, has been brought to Huntsville to support VORTEX-SE."Solar Employs More People in U.S. Electricity Generation Than Oil, Coal and Gas Combined. Here's a clip from The Center for Climate Protection: "In
the United States, more people were employed in solar power last year
than in generating electricity through coal, gas and oil energy
combined. According to a new report from the U.S. Department of Energy,
solar power employed 43 percent of the Electric Power Generation
sector’s workforce in 2016, while fossil fuels combined accounted for
just 22 percent. It’s a welcome statistic for those seeking to refute
Donald Trump’s assertion that green energy projects are bad news for the
American economy. Just under 374,000 people were employed in solar
energy, according to the report, while coal, gas and oil power
generation combined had a workforce of slightly more than 187,000. The
boom in the country’s solar workforce can be attributed to construction
work associated with expanding generation capacity. The gulf in
employment is growing with net generation from coal falling 53 percent
over the last decade. During the same period, electricity generation
from natural gas increased 33 percent while solar expanded 5,000 percent..."

Drake Equation Revision Hugely Ups Odds Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life Exists.
Maybe so, but where are the aliens? Could it be they've sampled our TV
shows (or politics) and want nothing to do with us? Here's an excerpt
from Inverse: "Mankind
doesn’t explore space solely in search of extraterrestrials, but we
keep our eyes peeled. Still, scientists know that the chances of
happening across a fellow traveler in the great beyond are minimal — and
they wrap their heads around the infinitesimal odds using the Drake Equation,
a seven-variable way of deriving the chance of active civilizations
existing beyond Earth. But equations get older and equations get wrong.
The Drake Equation, which takes into account various factors like the
rate of star formation, the fraction of stars that could form planetary
systems, the number habitable planets in those systems, and so on, is
now 55 years old. It doesn’t reflect the new information SETI
researchers have collected since the 1960s..."

Inside Alabama's Auto Jobs Boom: Cheap Wages, Little Training, Crushed Limbs. Bloomberg Businessweek has a tough article that should be essential reading: "...Alabama
has been trying on the nickname “New Detroit.” Its burgeoning auto
parts industry employs 26,000 workers, who last year earned $1.3 billion
in wages. Georgia and Mississippi have similar, though smaller, auto
parts sectors. This factory growth, after the long, painful demise of
the region’s textile industry, would seem to be just the kind of manufacturing renaissance
President Donald Trump and his supporters are looking for. Except that
it also epitomizes the global economy’s race to the bottom. Parts
suppliers in the American South compete for low-margin orders against
suppliers in Mexico and Asia. They promise delivery schedules they can’t
possibly meet and face ruinous penalties if they fall short. Employees
work ungodly hours, six or seven days a week, for months on end. Pay is
low, turnover is high, training is scant, and safety is an afterthought,
usually after someone is badly hurt. Many of the same woes that typify work conditions at contract manufacturers across Asia now bedevil parts plants in the South..."

"Sea of Despair" Among White, Working-Class Americans. Industries are being disrupted, jobs automated; companies making do with fewer employees. A Washington Post article claims it's not just blue collar America that's feeling the heat: "Sickness
and early death in the white working class could be rooted in poor job
prospects for less-educated young people as they first enter the labor
market, a situation that compounds over time through family dysfunction,
social isolation, addiction, obesity and other pathologies, according
to a study published Thursday by two prominent economists. Anne Case and Angus Deaton garnered national headlines in 2015 when they reported
that the death rate of midlife non-Hispanic white Americans had risen
steadily since 1999 in contrast with the death rates of blacks,
Hispanics and Europeans. Their new study extends the data by two years
and shows that whatever is driving the mortality spike is not easing up.
The two Princeton professors say the trend affects whites of both sexes
and is happening nearly everywhere in the country..."

Can We Know What Animals Are Thinking?
My dog (Leo) thinks I'm pretty stupid (and predictable), but he loves
me anyway. Here's an excerpt of an eye-opening story from The Economist
and Medium: "...Nevertheless,
most scientists now feel they can say with confidence that some animals
process information and express emotions in ways that are accompanied
by conscious mental experience. They agree that animals, from rats and
mice to parrots and humpback whales, have complex mental capacities;
that a few species have attributes once thought to be unique to people,
such as the ability to give objects names and use tools; and that a
handful of animals — primates, corvids (the crow family) and cetaceans
(whales and dolphins) — have something close to what in humans is seen
as culture, in that they develop distinctive ways of doing things which
are passed down by imitation and example. No
animals have all the attributes of human minds; but almost all the
attributes of human minds are found in some animal or other..."

Netflix: The Monster That's Eating Hollywood. Every industry gets disrupted - nobody gets a pass. The Wall Street Journal reports: "...The
ongoing legal battle is just one sign of the escalating tensions
between Netflix and Hollywood as the streaming-video company moves from
being an upstart dabbling in original programming to a big-spending
entertainment powerhouse that will produce more than 70 shows this year.
It is expanding into new genres such as children’s fare, reality TV and stand-up comedy
specials—including a $40 million deal for two shows by Chris Rock. The
shift has unnerved some TV networks that had become used to Netflix’s
original content being focused on scripted dramas and sitcoms..."

The Average Young American Binge-Watches TV for Five Hours Straight. Wave goodbye to linear (appointment) television. Here's an excerpt from Quartz: "Binge-watching
has hit critical mass in the US, according to a new study. Nearly
three-quarters—73%—of Americans said they binge-watched videos, either
on TV or another device, found a survey by Deloitte,
including a staggering 90% of US millennials. And 38% of those
millennials also said they binge-watched pretty much every week. The
firm interviewed more than 2,100 Americans, aged 14 and up, for its 11th
annual study on US media consumption. The research was conducted by an
independent firm last November..."Photo credit: "Streaming and mobile video has made it so much easier to binge." (AP/Eric Charbonneau/Invision for Showtime).

What You Can Do About Climate Change. There
are lots of things you can do, including voting for pro-science
politicians running for local, state and national offices. An article at
The New York Times argues that the most important thing you can do is drive a more fuel-efficient vehicle: "...The
simple fact is that American drivers are a significant contributor to
greenhouse gas pollution, so having a vehicle fleet that burns less fuel
can have an outsize impact on total emissions. Though the United States
has just 4 percent of the world's population, it is responsible for 14
percent of man-made greenhouse gases that end up in the atmosphere.
Transportation accounts for 27 percent of those emissions. And 60
percent result from driving personal vehicles..."

The Major U.S. TV Networks Spent a Grand Total of 50 Minutes on Climate Change Last year - Combined. Quartz has the story: "By all accounts, 2016 was an eventful year for the planet. It was the year when a record amount of coral perished
in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, deforestation in the Amazon
increased nearly 30%, polar sea ice the size of India disappeared, and
of course it got hotter. In fact, it was the hottest year ever recorded. But the average American could be forgiven for not knowing about any of this. Because major US TV news networks, fixated on an election
that provided the drama and entertainment of reality TV, dedicated
almost no time to covering climate change. The nightly news programs of
ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News Sunday collectively aired 50 minutes of
climate-change coverage in 2016, according to research
from Media Matters, a nonprofit research organization that covers
American media. This is 96 minutes less than in 2015, a combined drop of
about 66%..."

Documentary Explores How Climate Change is Impacting Yosemite. CBS News has the video promo: " PBS'
"Nature" series will premeire "Yosemite," a sublime look at one of our
nation's most stunning national parks. It's also a sobering one, as the
park's ecosystem is threatened by climate change. Award-winning nature
filmmaker Joseph Pontecorvol, who produced, wrote and served as a
cinematographer, joins "CBS This Morning: Saturday" to discuss the
filming process and the park's future."Climate Change Signal in Great Plains Wildfires? Is
the unusual warmth that helped to create conditions favorable for
record wildfires over the southern Plains related to background warming,
or just a random event? Here's an excerpt from Climate Signals: "...Since
the 1970s, large grass and shrubland fires have increased by more than
100,000 acres per decade. The frequency and intensity of wildfires in
the Great Plains are increasing as the combination of higher
temperatures, untamed underbrush and more extreme drought elevate
wildfire risk. Formal attribution work has identified the fingerprint of
global warming in the record hot temperatures that swept across the US
east of the Rockies in February 2017, as climate change increased the
likelihood of such heat by threefold. The heat fueled worsening drought
conditions in the Great Plains region, contributing to the extreme fire
conditions in early March that precipitated major blazes in Kansas,
Oklahoma, Colorado, and Texas. One blaze, encompassing Clark and
Comanche counties along Kansas' southern border with Oklahoma, is the
largest wildfire on record in the state..."Global Warming is Increasing Rainfall Rates. Here's an excerpt of a story from Dr. John Abraham at the University of St. Thomas, writing for The Guardian: "...In
my state, we have had four 1000-year floods since the year 2000! Two
years ago, Minneapolis, Minnesota had such flooding that people were
literally fishing in the streets as lakes and streams overflowed and
fish escaped the banks. No joke, I actually observed fish swimming past
me as I waded up a street. This occurrence is being observed elsewhere
in my country and around the world. It falls upon city planners and
engineers to design infrastructure that is more able to accommodate
heavy rains and manage water. This means designing river containment
areas or flood plains, reinforcing buildings and houses, and increasing
the capacity of storm drainage in urban areas, just to name a few. These
modifications present costs but not preparing for increased flooding
poses even greater financial and social costs. Moreover, storing water
from times when there is too much for the inevitable times when we have
too little (drought), results in better water management and multiple
benefits..."

Photo credit: "Jared Bakko
hauls a boat down a flooded road after taking supplies to his
grandmother as the Red River flood waters began to recede just south of
Moorhead, Minnesota, USA, 28 March, 2009." EPA/CRAIG LASSIG Photograph: Craig Lassig/EPA.

How Climate Change is Altering Spring. Michigan Radio has the report, confirming what many of us have already observed: "...That
“magical spring period” she’s talking about is called the vernal
window. It’s basically when the snow melts, the rivers start rushing,
the seeds sprout, birds start to sing: all of the classic signs of
spring. But Contasta’s new study finds
that those very basic, ecological things are changing. In our warmer
winters, that vernal window – the spring awakening, basically – happens
over a much longer period of time. And things that used to happen back
to back, now have a longer lag time in between. “That could be a longer
time when, soil is warm, where water could be moving through the soil,
and trees are not active,” she says. Which could be bad for the trees,
of course..."